1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method for carrying out a safety function of a vehicle and to a total system for carrying out this method.
2. Related Art
Modern vehicles are being increasingly equipped with active and passive protection devices. The protection devices are generally functional units of the vehicle configured to implement special safety functions in a partially or completely automated fashion. A safety function typically serves, after a defined dangerous incident or a dangerous situation has been detected and determined, to restore a state or operating mode of the vehicle that is as safe as possible or to maintain that state, in order, in this way, to avoid or at least minimize danger to persons and objects as well as personal injury and material damage. Known safety functions already in widespread use are, for example, the triggering of an airbag by an airbag system and the braking of individual wheels or of a plurality of wheels of the vehicle by an ESC system.
The carrying out of safety functions basically requires data containing information necessary for carrying out the safety function, for example information relating to the operating state or the state of movement of the vehicle. This data can be derived, for example, from sensor data of a sensor unit of the vehicle, for example a sensor unit for detecting rotational speeds of the wheels or for detecting a collision of the vehicle.
Contemporary development work has also focused on such safety functions that completely or partially assume control of the state of movement of the driving vehicle and, for example, automatically change the speed or the direction of travel of the vehicle, for example in order to prevent a rear-end collision or to drive around an obstacle.
Generally, and in particular in the case of the last-mentioned safety functions, there is, however, frequently uncertainty as to whether the data that is instantaneously available for carrying out the respective safety function (and the information contained in the data) is sufficiently safe and reliable for carrying out this safety function. In particular, there is uncertainty about the quality, the availability and the reliability of a communication system used during the transmission of the data, and in particular, uncertainty about the transmitted data quality and about possible quality losses during the reception of data. It is therefore possible, for example, for data loss or data falsification, for example due to the occurrence of a fault in the communication system during the transmission of the data, to adversely affect the carrying out of the safety function. Such an adverse effect could, for example, involve the safety function being carried out at the wrong time or using incorrectly calculated parameters.